Literally ‘the situation is tired’. Obviously saying ‘the situation is’ anything in English is very unidiomatic, but the same doesn’t apply to الحالة. The meaning of ta3baane here isn’t so much tired as ‘worn out’, ‘miserable’ (as in نفسيتي تعبانة ‘I’m worn out, depressed’ or بيت تعبان ‘a crappy/worn out house).

ونسيتي اهل الطرابيشw @nsiiti 2ahl éTTarabiishAnd you forget all about the normal people

اهل الطرابيش – you’ve probably encountered this use of 2ahl (‘the people of’) before, which is a lot more common in Arabic than in English. A طربوش is a fez, so literally ‘the fez people’. Here he’s using fez as a symbol for class, obviously.

رزق الله لمن كنتي وكناréz2aLLa lémmen kénti w kénnaHow great it was when

رزقالله – this word has various different forms (z2aLLa, s2aLLa etc). It usually expresses nostalgia and is most commonly followed by a word meaning ‘when’.

لمن – one of various regional forms of lamma.

نجي لعندك تجي لعناnéji la3éndek téji la3énnaWe’d come and see you and you’d come and see us

The verbs are subjunctive because of the kénti w kénna in the previous sentence, which connects to this one. It’s literally ‘when you would and we would / come and see you, come and see us’.

I’ve put together a PDF giving the Jordanian and Palestinian equivalents of the verb forms we’ve already detailed elsewhere for Syrian, with the indispensable help of my friend and colleague Elias Shakkour, a native speaker of Palestinian Arabic.

This is a post about the highs and lows of translation, the difficulties of colloquial, and – perhaps most importantly – the cack-handed half-heartedness of Netflix’s subtitling.

In my actual life – that is, when I’m not following my real vocation of writing snarky and/or fake-authoritative posts about Syrian dialect on the internet – I work as a translator. I also, sometimes, watch TV (as the innumerable lines from musalsalat I’ve used as examples might suggest). We’ve already slated the bizarre and occasionally desperately wrong stabs at English you can find in MBC’s abysmal MSA subtitling – but bad translation is far from confined to media conglomerates and their poor renderings of 4-year-old American B-movies. It turns out that it’s also a problem for groundbreaking American streaming services’ poor renderings of (relatively new) Syrian-Lebanese dramas.

You might already be aware of الهيبة, the breakout Mafia drama (and periodic Godfather ripoff) starring Teim Hasan and Nadine Nasib Njeim – if not from watching it, then because of the vast outpouring of memes it produced. I started it a while ago for the plot, but after discovering that it was being aired on Netflix my interest shifted rapidly and sadly predictably to professional curiosity about the translation. And I wasn’t disappointed.

I should say before we dive into some of the weirder translation choices and how they should be fixed that I don’t blame the translator for most of this stuff. They clearly got a native speaker of Arabic whose English is decidedly non-native to do these translations – which has its advantages, especially in a field (colloquial translation) where there’s a shortage of native anglophones. But if you’re going to take that option, at least fork out for a native English proof-reader.

The point of this post isn’t just to shit all over Netflix’s translation. Since these translations are clearly the work of a native Arabic speaker, the translation errors are not about misunderstanding the source but conveying it inaccurately in the target language. Mistakes in a foreign language are often interesting insights into how someone’s native language works – which can be useful for learners in avoiding the same mistakes. There are a lot of occasions where the translator departs from the source text in an attempt to make it more comprehensible or more idiomatic, and ends up using even more conspicious Arabisms than they would have done if they’d just stuck to something more literal. These are, from a linguistic point of view, very interesting.

Oh – and one more caveat. Since I imagine Netflix might be a bit more litigiously-inclined than your average Arab drama production company, I obviously won’t be including samples of video here (it’s difficult in any case to extract video from Netflix and I’d have to resubtitle it). But I will give timestamps in case you want to check the words out in context.

Anyway, with no further ado, let’s launch into the mistakes themselves.

1) Lack of tense agreement

This is one of the problems that could really have been solved so easily even by the laziest and most slapdash of English editors.

This is in response to the question ‘did you swing by the house?’ so the ambiguity of ‘we’ll go together’ (where the Arabic has عالبيت) is forgivable. شوف شو صار معك (literally ‘to see what has happened with you’) also contributes little enough to the meaning that dropping it is probably justified – when subtitling you often have to cut down the original to make the written English digestible in the time available. But assuming you’re a native speaker of English, even if you don’t know intellectually what ‘tense agreement is’, that ‘I thought I will come here first. Then we’ll go together.’ should be like nails down a blackboard to your native intuition – even though it (or more accurately because it) copies the Arabic syntax (literally ‘I said I’ll drop in on you to see what has happened with you then we’ll carry on to the house’) literally.

2) Weird conditionals

شو بدو يشتغل حماية عندك شي بدو يشتغل درايفر عندك بحس انو بينفعوك الك اكتر منيshi béddo yéshtéghel 7imaaye 3éndak shi béddo yéshteghel draayver 3éndak b7éss 2énno byénfa3uuk 2élak 2aktar ménniTheir translation: Some of them want to work as guards for you, others as drivers for you. I feel like they’ll come in handy for you rather than me. (E20, 25:00)
My translation: Guys who want to be your bodyguard, guys who want to be your driver – I feel like they’d be more use to you than me.

Here a character is doing job interviews but all she’s getting is people wanting to work for her husband. I don’t envy a native speaker of Arabic trying to convey this, because shi… shi… doesn’t really have a direct equivalent, so for a translator it’s really a matter of first understanding the original and then using intuition to settle on something that sounds natural in English. What I’m more interested in though actually is the use of the future rather than the conditional in the second clause. As we know, the simple present in Arabic often conveys a vaguely conditional or ‘dispositional’ meaning for which ‘would’ is usually better in English than a future or a present. (Also not sure why they went for ‘rather than me’ when a literal translation of the Arabic would have conveyed the original better).

3) Literal translations of Arabic expressions (that sometimes aren’t even there in the original)

انت ناوي تجلطا لامك؟inte naawi téjléTa la2émmak?
Their translation: are you intending to give your mother a stroke? (E22, 42:10)
My translation: Are you trying to give mum a stroke?

The context here is that a character is insisting on keeping a woman he rescued from being sold to an enemy in his house, despite his brother’s complaints. جلط doesn’t really have the same close connection with the literal medical phenomenon of having a stroke as the English expression, which although it can be used metaphorically, invokes the actual illness much more than جلط does. Since, however, the two characters’ mother is actually frail and ill, I’m all right with using جلط here even if the exact implication is a bit different from the Arabic (which simply implies frustrating or wearing her out) because we end up with the same meaning: you’re driving her mad with this behaviour.

Weirder is the ‘your mother’ – the two characters are brothers. Saying امك in this context, to a sibling or اخوك or ابوك etc, is natural in Arabic – particularly in a context of chastisement – but in English it sounds bizarre, as if she’s not also the mother of the second brother. Likewise, ناوي here – although generally translatable as ‘intending’ – sounds very off when literally translated that way into English. We would say, I think, ‘trying’.

انا بزمناتي وقت كنت لسا اصغر منك انفرضت عليي جوازتها لسمية السعيد فرض. كانت لساتها ولد ما ما بتعرف شي.. اربع سنين من عمري انكبو كب. ومع هيك ولا قلت هي حياتي ولا قلت تضرب عيشتي2ana bzamanaati wa2@t ként léssa 2azghar ménnak @nfaraDet 3aleyyi jwaazéta lasumayya ssa3iid farD. kaanet lissaata walad maa bta3ref shi. 2arba3a sniin mén 3émri nkabbu kabb. w ma3 heek wala 2élt hayy 7ayaati wala 2élt téDrab 3iishti.
Their translation: Back in the days when I was even younger than you, I was forced to marry Somayya Al-Said. She was just a young girl who knows nothing. Four years of my life were wasted just like that. Nevertheless, I didn’t say that I’m free with my life, or that I had a miserable life here. (E15, 11:24)
My translation: Back in the day, when I was even younger than you are now, I was forced to marry Somayya Al-Said. She was just a young girl who didn’t know anything. Four years of my life wasted – just like that. But not once did I say ‘this is my life to do with as I please’. And not once did I despair of living that way.

This one is something of a gold mine.To be fair ‘back in the days when I was even younger than you’ might just about pass muster – I think the structure of the Arabic (where bzamanaati is separate from wa2@t ma) is making me want a more directly faithful translation, but that’s not necessary. But we then have a tense error (‘she was just a young girl who doesn’t know anything’), mirroring the Arabic literally. I quite like their choice for انكبو كب, but the final sentence is a trainwreck. ‘Nevertheless’ for مع هيك, while in a more naturally phrased sentence that didn’t already set the native intuition a-tingling it might sneak under the radar, seems to be to be jarringly literary for this kind of context (maybe if we said ‘but nonetheless’ or ‘but nevertheless’ it might sound a bit better?)

The best bit, though, is هي حياتي – which is meant to mean ‘it’s my life’. The translator seems to have sensed that ‘it’s my life’ sounded funny and opaque in English on its own, especially without intonation – and resolves the problem by translating it indirectly. The translation, unfortunately, is not a natural English expression but a literal translation of a different Arabic expression – حياتي وحر فيها ‘it’s my life and I’m free in/with it’.

تضرب عيشتي is a difficult one. It literally means ‘may my life/way of living be struck’, but expresses a feeling that your life is terrible. There are a couple of close-ish alternatives in English, but none that are as inoffensive (and TV-safe) as this. I approve of the rephrasing in principle but I’m not sure how nice that rephrasing actually is.

‘Not once’ also, I think, conveys the strength of ولا more nicely than the original translation does.

This one is pretty much self-explanatory. The speaker has just tasted some لبن, which if you’ve never had it (shame on you) is savoury yoghurt. jémed yéjmad refers to the process of… well, I think the technical term might well be ‘curdle’. مزبوط here means ‘exactly right’ or ‘properly’. How the translator ended up at ‘much dense’ I’m genuinely not quite sure, but I suspect it was another effort at free translation that ended up with a swing and a miss. I’m also not sure about the منيح – often with Arabic adjectives standing alone the most natural English equivalent is a full sentence with a copula.

بس يجي جبل رح نخليه يدوقونbass yéji jabal ménkhallii yduu2onTheir translation: When Jabal is here, we’ll ask him to have a taste.
My translation: When Jabal gets here we’ll ask/get him to have a taste.

The first one is actually not that bad, but the second one makes the classic mistake of getting mixed up between various English causative constructions. Both these sentences use خلي, which in different contexts can mean ‘get someone to X’, ‘make someone X’ or ‘let someone X’. Here the context (talking to a servant) and naturalness both rule out no. 2 and no. 3 – but it’s perhaps difficult to make that call for a non-native speaker. ‘Let him call me’ makes it sound like the servant steals his phone off him as soon as he comes into the house.

Incidentally, the plural in yduu2on refers to an implied لبنات labanaat, a plural form which is discussed at the end of this post.

I’m not sure what happened here. ‘Have someone bring Debb’s car’ is one of the occasions on which a freer translation seems to have worked out all right, although I think ‘get’ is a nicer translation than ‘bring’ here (at this point in the post my brain is starting to get accustomed to 3arabiizi in an unhelpful way to be quite honest with you) – but there’s no real reason for not going for the more literal ‘send someone to get Debb’s car’. ‘Until we figure out what’s happening’ is also a very nice translation that hits what is literally ‘until we know/find out what’s going to happen’ right on the head idiomatically.

The weirder one, though, is ‘never go downtown’. The meaning here is ‘don’t go into Beirut’ – they’re not in a different area of the city but two hours away in the countryside (‘downtown’ to me implies going from one part of the city into the city centre, which can be what عالبلد means but not here). As for ‘never’, I suspect this might be another stab at a freer translation to clarify the meaning that ends up using an Arabism – in this case a literal translation of عمرك or ابدا, which might be used here in the Arabic to emphasise the command (similar to ‘at all’) in a way that ‘never’ in English can’t.

5) Swing and a miss on English idiom

There are quite a few occasions where the translator has clearly (and probably very proudly) taken the opportunity to show off an idiomatic, less direct translation that they think belongs to the realm of English idiom. There may well be plenty of moments where this has worked out very well for them – but there are also plenty of moments where they miss the mark completely. Here’s one example:

شو يا دب؟ اي طريق بدنا ناخد معك؟ الصعب ياما الاصعب؟shuu ya débb? Ayya Tarii2 baddna naakhod ma3ak? éSSa3b ya2émma l2aS3ab?
Their translation: So, Debb. How do you want to deal with this? The easy road or the high road? (E5, 17:26)
My translation: So, Debb. How do you want to play this? The hard way, or the even harder way?

You could perhaps make the argument that ‘the hard way or the even harder way’ reads less naturally in English than ‘the hard way or the easy way’, even though in Arabic as well it’s an intuitive play on exactly that expression and can be conveyed, I think, pretty nicely into English. In any case, the ‘high road’ in English means something entirely different to ‘the hard way’ – i.e. taking the moral path which you should take even if it’s difficult – and ‘way’, not ‘road’, is the nice translation here in English even if the Arabic literally says ‘which road should we take with you?’

This is the response to the above line. يا وطن (a way of referring to police, etc – in Syrian you can say حكومة) is missed out entirely from the English despite the translator’s penchant for tortured renderings of general terms of address in ways that evoke Downton Abbey more than the Sopranos (معلم as ‘master’, ست ناهد as ‘lady Nahed’ etc). The first half we have to change to fit with the general English phrasing – the question is not ‘which road’, but ‘how’ (i.e. in which way). But it’s the second half I like best – ‘I’m irrelevant’ is a pretty free translation of مخصنيش بشي (the rural Lebanese ma-sh negation – Beiruti has maa khaSSni) which in fact means ‘I have nothing to do with…’ or ‘X has nothing to do with me’. There’s also the awkward translation of كمان as ‘as well’ in a negative sentence – while we can use kamaan freely regardless of whether the main verb is negative or declarative, in English *’I don’t know as well’ is like nails on a blackboard.

This is a belated FuSHa to Shami post on something that I somehow managed to completely avoid covering the first time round – what Cowell calls ‘presentational particles’. There are a few of these dialectally, but we’re only going to cover the main two here: ليك leek and هي/هاي hayy/haay.

هي hayy

This is the more universal of the two particles, used in all Levantine dialects. Its basic meaning is ‘here is’ or ‘there is’. Although for some speakers it’s homophonous with the feminine form of هاد (‘this [one]’, feminine), and might be etymologically related, it does not change for gender and can be used with anything:

ليك is Syrian and Lebanese, and is not used in Southern Levantine. Unlike hayy, which can be used for things that are both nearby and far away, ليك (which is probably originally from ‘for you’) is usually only used for things which are further away – i.e. not when just handing something over, in which case hayy would typically be used.

ليكو اجىleeko 2ijaHere he is [= there he is come]

ليك القطارleek ilqiTaarThere’s the train

Unlike hayy, ليك (when used on its own) can be modified for gender – ليكي leeki for feminine singular. But this ending cannot co-occur with the object pronouns. When object pronouns are added the only possibility is ليك, which is then gender neutral:

Leek/leeki also has another independent usage hayy doesn’t, meaning something like ‘look’ – i.e. introducing a new assertion (probably easier just to give an example than try and pin it down through description):

ليكي انا ما عندي وقت اتناقش معكleeki, 2ana maa 3indi wa2@t it2naa2ash ma3ikLook, I don’t have time to discuss this with you

This is a quick post about the word ‘barely’. ‘Barely’ is a pretty useful English word, with a few different possible translations in Levantine.

يا دوب ya doob

This is probably the most multi-purpose and useful word for ‘barely’ or ‘hardly’. It’s not particularly transparent, and I have no idea of the etymology. It can take pronoun suffixes (ya doobni, ya doobak) or appear on its own. Sometimes it triggers subjunctive.

هي يا دوب عمرها سنتينhiyye ya doob 3omrha santeenShe’s barely two years old [= her age is barely two years]

This is the simplest structure – ‘barely’ appears pretty much just as an adverb. However, you can also extend ‘barely’ sentences with a subclause. In these cases, whereas in English we typically use ‘when’ or ‘before’ in English, in Arabic the typical choice is إلا or إلا و:

You probably already know the words تقيل and خفيف in their literal senses, along with their plural forms. You’ve probably also heard at least some of the various verbs derived from them, or could guess at them based on our handy guide to causatives. You might not know, however, that calling someone ‘heavy’ is more likely to be a comment on how they deal with potential suitors than their actual weight. For this and more metaphors and expressions of similar weighty importance, have a look at this post.

As the different variations on the expression given above show, ‘like the world’ is a pretty misleading translation. (Psych!!!) As you probably know, عالم (in this sense feminine, not masculine) means ‘people’:

The expression متل العالم and its variations thus literally mean ‘like people’. What they actually mean, though, is ‘like [normal, respectable] people’, or by extension ‘properly’ or ‘decent[ly]’:

المهم يضل عنا بلد نعيش في متل العالمilmohimm yDell 3anna balad @n3iish fii mitl il3aalamThe important thing is that we still have a country where we can live decent/normal lives [= we can live in like people]

In these two examples the meaning can be relatively straightforwardly derived from the meaning of ‘people’, since the comparison is with a person. By extension, though, متل العالم and its variations can be used to refer to objects too!

لو في دوله متل العالم والناس ما بخلوا كلب متلك يعويlaw fii dawle mitl il3aalam winnaas maa bikhallu kal@b mitlak y3awwiIf we had a decent government [= a state like the people and the people] they wouldn’t let a bastard like you mouth off [= a dog like you bark]

ما اجى نص متل العالم تحت ايديهmaa 2ija naSS mitl il3aalam ta7t iideeBecause he wasn’t sent any decent scripts [= because a script like the people did not come under his hand]

You may already know the word عزم يعزم ‪3azam yi3zem ‘invite’ (not ‘be determined’ as in fuSHa), but unless you’re German or Turkish this simply gloss is likely to expose you to some misunderstandings and possibly some embarrassments without a little bit of cultural background. If you tell someone:

اكيد عزمتو بعد ما فادك هيك2akiid 3azamto ba3d ma faadak heek[You must have invited him after he did that for you]

What they mean is ‘you must have bought him dinner/bought him a drink after he did that for you’.

If after going out for coffee (or whatever) with someone they say:

انا عازمك2ana 3aazmakI invited you

They’re offering to pay. It’s polite to do this and then argue about it for a bit before one of you concedes (this can be a fairly awkward social thing to get used to, but it gets easier). Conceding immediately makes you look rude. This is a broader field of social awkwardness too, since even if you don’t explicitly say one of these expressions, you might (emphasis on might) be expected to pay if you invite someone somewhere.

The noun is عزيمة عزايم ‪3aziime 3azaayem ‘invitation’. Sometimes you might be invited (out of politeness) to have dinner somewhere, or just not be able to attend. Something you can say is:

This post is about all the different things you can do with your eyes (عين عيون ‭3een 3yuun). As anybody who’s listened to any Arab pop song can attest, the word 3een and its various variations appears all the time in Arabic. In fact there are loads and loads of nice idioms to do with eyes which it’s worth learning a bit about.

You can more or less divide these idioms up into three broad sections. The first set will be fairly familiar to English native speakers because they depend on a straightforward enough equivalence of eyes and seeing. The second set depends on a broad idea of the eye as something positive to be attached to compliments willy-nilly. The third set are to do with the evil eye.

Although I think this list is fairly comprehensive of the most common ones, many of these words – especially the curses and formulaic expressions – have about a thousand different variants and synonyms. Just to warn you.

Fairly literal stuff to do with eyes

حط عينك بعيني – ‭7eTT 3eenak b3eeni ‘look me in the eye’ [= put your eye in my eye]. Carries the same connotations of ‘be honest with me’ as the English expression does.

شوفت عينك shoofet 3eenak – ‘as you can clearly see’. shoofet is almost certainly a noun of instance with ـة, but it’s often spelt with a تاء in this fixed expression.

شفتو بعيني shifto b3eeni – ‘I saw it with my own eyes’ [= with my eye]. Various variants including بهالعينتين bhal3eenteen ‘with these two eyes’.

يا عيني عليك yaa 3eeni 3aleek – I can’t think of a particularly nice translation, but this is used when you describe something (for example that you can’t remember the name of) and someone else works it out, if someone works out what you’re talking about before you get there, or if someone says something you agree with. Probably equivalent to the dry old ‘there we go’ or ‘exactly’.

عيونك الحلوين ‭3yuunak il7ilwiin. Literally ‘your beautiful eyes’ or ‘it’s your eyes that are beautiful’, but don’t let that put you off. A nice fixed response to someone saying that something is 7ilw. You can also say inte l7ilw ‘you’re the nice one’.

نور عيونك nuur @3yuunak. Literally ‘light of your eyes’. Another fixed expression which can used to respond to the equally untranslatable نورت nawwar@t or منور mnawwer, literally ‘[you’ve] lit up [the place you’re visiting]’, but used to welcome someone or tell them they look nice on Facebook.

على عيني ‭3ala 3eeni – ‘on my eye’, a less common synonym of the omnipresent 3ala raasi. Used in all sorts of different contexts, but mainly to say ‘of course’ to a request. Various variants, including min 3eeni, abshir min hal3eenteen, etc.

على عيني وراسي ‭3ala 3eeni wraasi – ‘on my eye and my head’. A slightly more elaborate version of 3ala 3eeni or 3ala raasi. Like 3ala raasi this one can be used to express respect for someone (often before saying something rude about them):

The basic idea behind this, as you might know, is that feeling envy towards someone (hitting them with the evil eye) will cause bad things to happen to them, thus the synonym حسد يحسد ‭7asad yi7sid, literally ‘envy’. ‘Curse’ is a pretty good equivalent though, and obviously the expression is often used in a way that is not serious.

يخزي العين yikhzi l3een – literally ‘may He shame the eye’, i.e. may God stop you from being hit by the evil eye. A generic and arguably somewhat folksy way to compliment somebody or something.

كسر عينو kasar 3eeno – to have dirt on someone in such a way that they’re powerless against you, i.e. I guess to have ‘broken’ the power of their evil eye.

One of those translation curiosities you come across when you’re first learning Arabic is just how many different words for ‘mind’ there are. On the general theme of common idioms, one of the most common in colloquial is the word بال, which we’ll cover in this post.

There is a set expression, من اللي ببالي بالك or اللي ببالك بالك illi bbaali baalak which means something like ‘you-know-who’ or ‘you-know-what’, i.e. the person or thing both you and me are thinking of: